North country produces the black sheep of hate groups
My young golden retriever’s whole butt wagged as Bill Lewis tapped her on the head with one hand and stoked a big cigar in the other. He made no attempt to pet my old dog laying nearby. My old BLACK dog.
Turns out the retired college professor whom I have been smoking stogies with semi-regularly for years at a friend’s farmhouse in Stockholm is a member of what’s been dubbed a white supremacist group by some pretty famous watchdogs of such things – the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Lewis is a member of the Council of Conservative Crazies or Crazy Conservatives for Christ or Conservatives who Crave Chocolate...something with three Cs. The name doesn’t matter. The watchdogs say they are a hate group actively recruiting in the north country.
An editor in Watertown turned me on to the watchdog group’s map on the Internet that, sure enough, identified Parishville as the home of the haters. To see the map, http://www.splcenter.org/intel/map/hate.jsp#s=NY I was dumbfounded by the idea that I have lived here and worked in the news business here for so many years, yet needed some folks in Alabama to alert me there were racists in my neighborhood. Not neighbors who every now and then reveal some bigotry they harbor but usually keep hidden. These were supposedly real, live racists trying to recruit other haters into their fold.
I asked a reporter to do some digging and get to the bottom of this issue. After a day or so, he came back with two very unsettling words that started to clear things up: Miles Wolpin.
I know Wolpin well enough to say hello to him by his first name when I see him in a public place. I also know him well enough not to encourage any discussion beyond hello unless I am ready to hear some sort of anti-feminist or anti-government diatribe. But in all the years I have known him, I don’t recall any of his rants being racist. He never struck me as anything but a nut who was so far right he was wrong.
Wolpin, a retired political science professor and former town justice whose home is in Parishville, seems to be the darling of the Triple Cs, which the watchdogs think are pro-whites and anti-everyone else. So, by association, he becomes racist in the eyes of the watchdogs. And, by association, all the people who hang around with him in the group – Bill Lewis, for instance - carry the tag, too. It’s all pretty simple when you are making the call from Alabama I guess.
Bill Lewis is a host of things, and I’ll give you that liberal isn’t among them. We have an unspoken agreement that goes something like this: “I know what you are and you know what I am, so let’s talk about building cabinets or cleaning out our gutters or making chutney ... anything but politics.” That said, my clear and reasonable liberal views slip out every now and then. And his crazy right wing notions make an appearance on occasion in our conversations. So I have a pretty good idea where he stands ... and it is not on racist ground.
Maybe the founders of the Triple Cs intended that the club foster racism. Maybe in other parts of the country, the Triple Cs proudly carry the racist flag. But the Triple Cs that Wolpin leads are the the black sheep of white supremacist groups.
Wolpin can spew messages bloated by academia that make George W. look like a wimpy liberal in comparison. But he’s pretty weak on hatred of other races. Lewis is all about liberty, justice and the pursuit of crazy conservatism for all. But he’s also got black friends. That probably doesn’t get you a merit badge from any white supremacy club in America.
Wolpin and his crew have managed to stay virtually unknown outside of watchdog Web sites and a small circle of north country people despite years of “actively recruiting” members. They are really nothing but a bunch of crabby old guys with political views most people would think are way out there. They are a lot like the women I have dated in my life: Crazy but not dangerous. And some of them are fond of dogs ... even black ones.
